Welcome friends, today we visit HIP 15819 3 B, 192 kms in radius, it's an altogether bleak and uninviting place, bare stony plains with scattered rocks and the occasional crater. A few small canyons break the monotony but there are many places with better canyons to run, bigger craters to explore. There's no hope of finding life here either, no volcanism at all, there's also very little in the way of valuable minerals, some ytrium at a concentration of 2.2%, nothing else of any value.

I had a look around for a good spot to take a picture, but every direction looked exactly the same, oh well, we can't expect every place we visit to fascinating, so it doesn't matter where you land here this is the view you will be welcomed by;

is it worth a visit? Sure why not, it orbits a nice ringed landable, the young sun is an active B type and throws off some nice flares. It's about 589ly from Sol so not a long run and there are a few other nice bodies in the area I have reported on so why not drop in for a bit of different landscape.

Two in quick succession, running hot today, and that's just what this little body was doing.

HIP 20580 B 1 A, 164kms in radius, 411ly from Sol, it's quite close to it's parent star. This was a fairly notable body because it wasn't actually in my list of prospects, I check each system I pass through for interesting bodies and there it was! Unfortunately I can't claim discovery rights, that goes to a CMDR named John Xenir, but I think I can safely claim discovery rights over the geysers I found.

The system itself had a number of large landable bodes near the arrival star, my little moon is way out at over 35kls orbiting a smallish planet;

As you can see from the shots above the shape of the planet is rather squashed in on each side, however if you look at this picture taken 90% around the body;

You can see from that angle it's fairly round, it leads to the conclusion that the planet it shaped somewhat like a fat discus. This is unusual because of the axis of rotation, on most normal bodies the axis of rotation should be through the narrowest section, the earth for instance is an oblate spheroid, fatter at the equator than at the poles with the axis running through the thinnest area from north to south. This would be the expected axis of rotation because it is actually the force of the spin that causes the equatorial bulge. There are minor divergences in this model shape for the earth, triaxiality and pear shapedness expressed as coefficients of the ellispoid but that's getting to complicated for this discussion I think.

Anyway the fact is this body and some of the other small bodies I have observed have an axis of rotation through the wide section, it's as if you took that fat discus I mentioned earlier, stood it on its edge and spun it like a coin! It's possible this might happen due to effects of impact or other factors however this moon is in orbit around a larger planet and this arrangement becomes inherently unstable in such a situation.

Anyway, it's worth a visit even just because some future tweaking of the stellar forge may lead to these unusual bodies being corrected.

Well it's been a while between posts, but that's because I have wandered into the 21 Zeta Cephei system.

A precis, travelogue type!

21 Zeta Cephei system is dominated by its sun, a red super giant of 9o Sol radii, it ejects coronal masses in abundance;

Quite remarkable to watch, I wonder what it's like to fly through one of those?

On entering the system the first thing you will see, well apart from the giant burning ball of gas in your face of course, will be the gas giants lined up like so many brown bowling balls, with rings, brown bowling balls with rings, and swirling atmosphere, round bowling balls with rings and swirling atmosphere;

I was really wondering how to title this report, because once you get past the sun and the gas giants there really isn't much of interest. Of course there are moons, many, many moons. In fact many, many small moons. There are 25 moons in the system, 24 of them landable, 23 of them under 1000klm radius. Ideal you would think for exploration, but it turns out to be a system of uninteresting moons.

There's 1 A, 178 klm in radius, brown with a few craters;

4 B, 162 klms in radius, slightly egg shaped, but also brown with a few craters;

4 C, 155 klms radius,and yes you guessed it, brown, with craters, although it did have a mildly interesting group of splash craters, but it was dark on that side when I got there so I couldn't really build up my enthusiasm enough to wait around for 8 or so hours for it to get light to explore them;

And them we get to 4 D, 183 klms in radius and yes you guessed it, brown with craters as you can see from the first screenshot!

In fact the most interesting moons turned out to be 4 A, at 201 klm just 1klm to large to make it into this little screed of mine. It took about ten hours and two visits but I finally found some vulcanism so it gets an honorary mention, it makes the system worth visiting. There are two other moons 1 B and 4 E that also just exceed my size limit and another two moons under 500 klm radius.

The question is why just gas giants and small moons? What happened to all the roughly earth sized planets? Well the answer is of course that the planets and moons we see used to be the outer solar system, when the star expanded into its red super giant phase it absorbed all the closer orbiting planets and moons, leaving just the outer system gas giants with their collection of small moons. So imagine Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars being absorbed into the sun as it expands later in its life cycle to a red super giant leaving just Jupiter and and the other gas giants, and there you have 21 Zeta Cephei. Of course our sun not being massive enough may not expand into a red super giant, just a red giant, leaving a scorched earth and singed mars as well as the outer gas planets.

Well that's 21 Zeta Cephei for you, a series of small and uninteresting moons with a ringer thrown in!

Today we visit Synuefe AY-F d12-69 4 A, a metal rich moon with no volcanism and few outstanding features, an altogether unremarkable moon except for it being the smallest I have so far visited at 143km radius. It orbits a large ringed primary;

Slightly squashed with a few small splash craters, it presented little in photo opportunities;

And then I had the idea of going to the primary and seeing what it looked like from there;

It's the inner of the two little dots at the left edge of the star, rather fortunate positioning I thought!

Love that last pic - see you managed the camera ok now
I still can't get it to stop moving ...

Nah, took me ages to get into a position where the horizon was nearly level, then I had to hold the joystick twist control to stop it moving and take the pic. I can now take pictures like I used to take with the old camera setup, only now it takes me ten minutes instead of ten seconds. Still it was a lucky landing that the moon was in that exact position to get silhouetted by the sun, sometimes you just can't beat luck.

Nah, took me ages to get into a position where the horizon was nearly level, then I had to hold the joystick twist control to stop it moving and take the pic. I can now take pictures like I used to take with the old camera setup, only now it takes me ten minutes instead of ten seconds. Still it was a lucky landing that the moon was in that exact position to get silhouetted by the sun, sometimes you just can't beat luck.

There's a few of them ready to post, I have been helping a group over in Hruntia system find the volcanism on the local bodies in the system, that proved very successful with water volcanism found on five of the icy moons, and I have just signed up to the L.G.A.N Project so I am making my way out to California Nebula and while there I will check out the local small places, so anyway here goes;

First off the mark is HIP 60459 2 B, a metal rich moon of 163km radius 328ly from Sol. No volcanism or other significant features unfortunately, I have had a run of these quiet bodies, all four of these in fact are pretty ordinary as far as features, still, that's why I am here, it only takes one to be extraordinary for it to be worth the time, there is one screenshot taken in the splash crater featured in one of the face shots;

Next a pair of twins in the HR 3672 system, HR 3672 A 1 A, 160km in radius and 526ly from Sol. Again not active or any remarkable features and a screen shot from inside a crater;

HR 3672 A 1 B, 173km in radius and of course 526ly from Sol.

Ooh look, a rock, yes I know, not original, but better than just the bare crater from the previous two screenshots

Finally we have HR 5449 A 1 A, 197km radius, 481ly from Sol an unremarkable body except for its location, poor lonely thing, all it's friends decided to hide 100,000's of ls away, just it and it's mummy, you have to wonder how the stellar forge comes up with things so unlikely, but then you think, well yes it is unlikely but there are 400b systems in the galaxy so maybe it's not that unlikely after all! Not even a decent splash crater on this one to get a screenshot of so just some random canyons from the air.

Well that's it for today folks, a roundup of the unremarkable, I am sure there are many more to go. Fly safe out there!

It's been a while, I was doing some looking around at other things, but still dropping into system with the small bodies while doing so, now I have quite a list, the last one was probably the most interesting but I will surprise you and do them in order.

HD 43353 3 A, 164km in radius, 1,177ly from Sol,an unremarkable discus shaped moon orbiting a hot ringed planet of a blue white star. I was going to give it a a very poor review but really it's no worse than many other moons and it does have vulcanism, I was just unable to find it and I don't like admitting defeat. It's still there, a tiny moon with undiscovered vulcanism if you are feeling lucky.

HR 1615 2 A, 141km in radius, 1,998ly from Sol. it has a jaunty tilt to the left (right take your pick) but no vulcanism so little to report really. Just a quick update here though, this is getting pretty close in size to the smallest body yet discovered, a body about 20kly from Sol of 138km in radius, so it is notable for that if nothing else.

Now we have a set of triplets!

Pyult VP-O e6-2 2 A, 175km in radius, 3,807ly from Sol.

Pyult VP-O e6-2 2 B, 142km in radius, 3,807ly from Sol.

Pyult VP-O e6-2 2 C, 184km in radius, 3,807ly from Sol.

So that was in unremarkable triplet except for being so close together although I have noticed that systems with small bodies will often have a number of small bodies under the 500km radius mark.

Col 89 Sector HL-X d1-12 C 1 A, 181km in radius, 4,680ly from Sol. Starting to get a big of distance away from the bubble now so these bodies aren't just a quick visit now,but if you are looking for a target to shoot from to get you 5kly in youcan always pick one of these little bodies. This one is rather yellowish compared to the other metal rich bodies I have been visiting.

Finally we get to the last one for this update. I decided to visit a nebula so I looked for one with a little planet or moon nearby and Jellyfish came up with a small moon right in the middle.This was more remarkable for the system than anything else, a Neutron star with a bevy of orbiting stars, including two M types and a few dwarf stars. My little body was right out at the outer reaches of the system orbiting an M type star with a bevy of other small bodies under 300km radius, unfortunately none of them volcanic.

CXOU J061705.3+222127 5 A, 194km in radius, 5000.01ly from Sol. If you want to get your 5kly up this appears to be a perfect target, certainly no wasted distance. It's on the edge of the nebula so I got some interesting pictures.

Pretty ordinary as far as small bodies go but when you think the sun you can see in the sky is actually orbiting with a group of others around a neutron star it becomes slightly special;